Pop quiz: It's 3 am in the morning and raining (no, pouring) outside. You wake up and notice a small rash on both of your arms. It doesn't bother you. No itching, no pain. You are not having trouble breathing. You feel fine, but you have a rash. What do you do next?
A. Go back to sleep, if the rash is still there in the morning then call your doctor
B. Take a Benadryll and go back to sleep
C. Put some lotion or some other something on it and go back to sleep
D. Go to your local emergency room
You guessed it! The otherwise healthy, 34 year old woman got out of bed at 3am and braved flash floods to come to the ER. I really wanted to take her outside and read her the sign above the building; E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y R-O-O-M. In case your wondering, the definition of emergency is, " 1. A serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action. 2. A condition of urgent need for action or assistance: a state of emergency"
Instead I calmly explained to this otherwise apparently intelligent women that there is nothing that can be done for a nonspecific rash. I sent her home and told her to take Benadryll as needed. Another life saved......whoah! That was a close one.
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8 comments:
Never ceases to amaze me. LOL!
I love it.
It's like the edited parts of Trauma life in the ER...right here on blog land.
I CAN'T WAIT to hear what comes next :)
2 more days. no wait. 1 more day.
Silly people
at least you only have to deal with them for ONE MORE DAY!
I think you should read my newest blog...I have a feeling you'd be able to shed some light on my darkness :/
You know...in all your free time and everything ;)
LOL sounds really familiar to what used to happen at my house since my dad is a doctor, and we happen to live in Mexico, where most people arent even semi-educated as to what constitutes an emergency.
Once we had a patient come in at around 3:30 am with a -get this- splinter on his thumb.
No, the splinter hadn't been there for a few days and was infected. No, the splinter was NOT the size of a thumbtack, just your average run-of-the-mill splinter. The GUY just freaked because he got a splinter from his not-yet-sanded headboard at 3 am.
And yeah, I had to get up since I was my dad's "assistant" ever since I was 13 and declared my ambition to go into med school outta high school (which I did, for a whole 2 years before my parents discovered I'm a lezzie)
Ah. Memories.
Oh. And I got this splinter out with a sterilized needle while my dad looked on, just in case you were wondering.
FUNNY!!!!!
great story, I usually read mere's blog..nice to find yours. I do 13hr nights in the NICU and I swear 3am is the time for acopic calls from midwives and nicu nurses. I agree who needs sleep anyway..
I think you should just leave your craziest stories of the stupidest people you encounter in the course of your night!!
perhaps she thought it wouldn't be so crowded??? naw, she was stupid.
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